Cuil

[Mercedes Benzene]

Cuil was launched today.
It's a search engine created by an ex-Google employee, Anna Patterson, who was the woman who sold Google the formulas/algorithms that made their search engine what it is today. In my opinion, the format is a little awkward, but it's definitely something that can be improved upon, and it's already coined to be "the world's biggest search engine."

Here's an article from CNN Money:
Ex-Google workers launch rival search engine - Jul. 28, 2008

So, will you use it?
Discuss.

[Tormod]

I tried it but it hardly seems useful at all right now. A search for hypography gives lots of meaningless links and all have the same text (ie no relevance in the summaries).

[jab2]

I was not impressed with the links that was returned on my searches. It seems Cuil's biggest selling point is the huge amount of pages it scans. But total pages scanned and cataloged does not necessary translate into relevance. I rarely use more than the first 30-50 returns from a Google search, so whether there are now 1 000 000 returns for Cuil as opposed to Googles 500 000 it would hardly make a difference. If however Cuil return pages that would better suit my search, I would use it. But from the returns I got yesterday, I would still stay with Google.

BTW, I used quotation marks a lot to search for text strings and get a zero return from Cuil if I use a search string enclosed in quotation marks. Seems like the + and - I am using with Google also throw Cuil off. And the landing page is not very intuitive when it comes to explaining search refinements. In fact there are no help at all.

If I had to only go by the look and functioning at this staged and was not bombarded with the fact that the owners/developers are ex Google people, I would have given it one try and not even have remembered the engines name after a day.

[Mercedes Benzene]

Yeah, all of the points you guys made were apparent to me too. I don't remember a time without Google, but maybe it was this way when it first came out as well. It is my hope that Cuil will work out it's problems, and eventually get the support that Google has, because the large amount of pages searched should make it a great site.

[C1ay]

A search for c1ay turns up more hits on me on their first page than the same search on Google A search for "science forums" returns a number of deep links on the site but none to the front page of our forums

[Overdog]

I read about it yesterday on the BBC site, but haven't tried it yet. I'll take your word for it that it needs improvement, but I'm not surprised. I'm sure it's going to get a lot better over time though, if the funding is there.

I do remember the time before Google...Yahoo. But once I tried Google, I've only used Yahoo search a few times since...

[alexander]

Originally Posted by mercedes

who was the woman who sold Google the formulas/algorithms that made their search engine what it is today.

Actually i can't see that as being true, perhaps the formulas that made the search engine the speed it is today, but the search engine, the idea, came from the two creators, its that same underlying principal of simplicity that makes google tick with relevant results to this day. But perhaps data storage, and search pattern algos, i would buy. Not to discredit the woman ofcourse, i may be wrong.

So, will you use it?

Originally Posted by jab2

BTW, I used quotation marks a lot to search for text strings and get a zero return from Cuil if I use a search string enclosed in quotation marks.

Oh noes, i can't even search people who share their directories, and open ftp server for porn, or php shells... well that's no fun

Originally Posted by jab2

ex Google people

If the engine is any good, when they hit the stock market, google will probably buy them out...

I don't trust most companies with my search data, i know and well understand that every bit of data that i search for, is being recorded and stored by google, i know that all of my emails are indexed, and i know that any time i log into google, it uses my searches, and my emails to tailor ads to me (though i have blocked google ads a long time ago). Here's the thing, i also know that google is a respectful company that has many times told the federal gov-t and agencies to go screw themselves, and has not given out the search data without a supreme court ruling (and so far i don't know if any has gone through). Will Cuil do that for me? chances are, since they are a much smaller company, and we know little about them, they will likely give out info to gov-t entities and agencies, because they DONT wanna get sued...

[Nitack]

The one thing I like about them is that they used a black background. The page is set up funky, and your right, their searches don't really return completely relevant stuff. I'll go with Blackle

Blackle - Energy Saving Search

[C1ay]

I did get quotes to work some of the time but it highlighted a new issue for me. Searching both Google and Cuil for "pig latin" with and without quotes returns:

Google "pig latin" 837,000 for "pig latin"
Google pig latin 1,080,000 for pig latin
Cuil "pig latin" 116,251 results for "pig latin"
Cuil pig latin 116,251 results for pig latin

Google return more hits with and without quotes compared to the identical results Cuil returned both with and without quotes. Me thinks someone's algorithms are not quite ready for prime time yet.

[Symbology]

My search for "Institute for Play" returned zero hits in Cuil. I sent them an email pointing out the difference between there non-return set and Googles.

But I also welcome some competition. I find it intriguing that so much of this is just having the cohones to do it, and that Microsoft doesn't seem to have them.